Did any COVID era ASX IPOs actually succeed? Yes and here are 6 of them!

The cohort COVID era ASX IPOs was significantly large, but there were far more dud companies than successes. During 2021, A$13bn in capital was raised and the total value of new listings was $52 billion – with the latter including dual listings, direct listings and spinoffs. The average performance was 17% which was actually better than the ASX 200 and the grand total of listings was 240 (the most since 2007) – don’t take our word for it.

But 4 and a half years on, and the bulk of companies that listed in Australia were duds – there’s no sugarcoating that. Most companies didn’t get anywhere, some gave up the ghost while others are struggling on but have little to no hope of getting anywhere. And in all likelihood, they would never have listed had it not been for cheap money, bored retail investors and a scramble for growth stories. Remember all those Afterpay wannabes like Zebit, Payright and Openpay? Remember Step One? All those food delivery stocks like My Food Bag and My Foodie Box? Even Best & Less had a brief stint and ultimately couldn’t make it work!

But enough with the negativity because not every COVID-era listing turned into a cautionary tale. Here are 6 of them.

COVID era ASX IPOs that actually succeeded

Dynamic Drill and Blast (ASX: DDB)

Dynamic Drill and Blast Holdings listed on the ASX in August 2020 raising A$5m through the issue of 25 million shares at A$0.20 each. The Perth-based company provides drilling and blasting services to mining and construction clients in Western Australia, work that ranged from mine production drill and blast to grade control drilling and deep artesian bores. It was a straightforward services business benefiting from WA’s closed borders during the pandemic, which allowed mining activity to continue largely uninterrupted while other states struggled.

Dynamic grew steadily through organic contract wins and bolt-on acquisitions, including the 2022 purchase of Welldrill and the 2024 acquisition of Airwell Flow Testing. But the company is no longer listed on the ASX having been taken over in 2024 and it is now known as BWE Drilling. In 2024, Australian Food Super (a super fund for food workers, especially abbitoir workers) launched an on-market takeover bid for the company, ultimately taking full control at a cash consideration of A$0.28 per share. That represented a 40% premium to the A$0.20 IPO price, a solid if unspectacular return from a share price perspective, although it was bought for $38.9m having listed at $11m. Not bad in our view.

4DMedical (ASX: 4DX)

It has been a tough few years for medtechs but 4DMedical has been an exemption. 4DMedical listed on the ASX in August 2020, commercialising XV Technology, an imaging platform developed at Monash University that converts sequences of X-ray or CT images into four-dimensional, quantitative maps of lung function. Its flagship product, CT:VQ, transforms a routine chest CT scan into a ventilation and perfusion map, information that has historically required a separate, more invasive nuclear medicine scan. What’s the big deal? Well, it lets hospitals generate high-value diagnostic data from equipment they already own, without an additional procedure for the patient.

For a few years the company lagged but it never looked back once it got FDA 510(k) clearance for CT:VQ in September 2025, which 4DMedical secured after completing its Phase 3 CLEAR trial and satisfying the FDA’s review of its manufacturing and clinical data. The approval opened up a US market 4DMedical estimates at more than US$1.1bn annually in the ventilation-perfusion imaging category alone, and adoption followed quickly: deployments at Mayo Clinic, Stanford, Cleveland Clinic, UC San Diego Health and the University of Miami, alongside a distribution partnership with Philips. 4DX listed with a market cap of $190m but is now $2.4bn. Take a bow.

Aussie Broadband (ASX: ABB)

Aussie Broadband listed on the ASX on 16 October 2020 at an IPO price of A$1.00 per share, raising A$40m and giving the company an initial market capitalisation of A$190.3m. Aussie Broadband is an NBN reseller and telecommunications provider, offering broadband, mobile, voice and wholesale services, distinguished largely by its Australian-based customer support and its investment in its own backhaul fibre network rather than relying entirely on leased infrastructure.

The scale of Aussie Broadband’s growth since listing is the clearest illustration of why it belongs on this list. At the time of its IPO the company had around 300,000 customers; it has since surpassed 1 million broadband connections, with total services across residential, business, enterprise, government and wholesale customers exceeding 1.1 million. Revenue has grown from prospectus forecasts of around A$338m for FY21 to A$1.19bn in FY25, an 18.7% increase on the prior year, while net profit after tax rose 24.5% to A$32.8m over the same period.

Granted, that growth has been underpinned by a string of acquisitions, including Over the Wire, Symbio and, most recently, the AGL Telco retail book, which management expects to help Aussie Broadband become the NBN’s third-largest retailer. However, it recorded some organic growth – as shown by the growth in its customer numbers in its core NBN business. ABB shares have moved from A$1.00 at listing to above A$5.00 through much of CY26, a gain of more than 400%, as the market has rewarded consistent market share gains against Telstra and TPG. Moreover, it now sits at a market cap of $1.5bn.

EBR Systems (ASX: EBR)

EBR Systems, based in California and having shares listed as CHESS Depositary Interests, is the company behind WiSE, a wireless cardiac pacing system that delivers cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) without the leads that conventional CRT devices require. Around 40% of heart failure patients do not respond to traditional CRT because the leads used to deliver electrical pulses cannot reach the required position inside the heart; WiSE addresses this by using a leadless, endocardial approach to pace the left ventricle directly from the inside.

EBR Systems earned its place on this list through a single, transformative event: FDA approval of the WiSE CRT System in April 2025. That approval made WiSE the world’s first and only leadless solution for left ventricular endocardial pacing, and it was the culmination of a Phase 3 trial that showed a 16.4% reduction in left ventricular end systolic volume compared to a 9.3% reduction for the benchmark therapy. EBR has told investors the approved indication addresses a market of at least US$3.6bn.

Commercialisation followed a familiar biotech pattern, with the first US implants in June 2025, Medicare’s New Technology Add-On Payment (NTAP) reimbursement confirmed for FY26, and quarterly revenue only beginning to build meaningfully through early 2026. The regulatory and reimbursement milestones, rather than the current share price, are what make EBR Systems a genuine success story to date; the commercial ramp, and whether it can be funded without excessive further dilution, remains the next test.

Almonty Industries (ASX: AII)

Almonty Industries completed a secondary listing on the ASX in August 2021, issuing CHESS Depositary Interests at A$1.00 each to raise A$15.25m, having already been listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange for some years. Almonty is a tungsten miner, and its flagship asset is the Sangdong Mine in South Korea, historically one of the largest and highest-grade tungsten deposits in the world before it was mothballed in the early 1990s. Tungsten is a critical mineral used in defence, munitions, cutting tools and electronics, and Almonty markets itself as a conflict-free, Western-aligned alternative to Chinese supply, which dominates global production.

Almonty’s share price performance since its ASX listing has been extraordinary: from A$1.00 at IPO to around A$24-26 by mid-2026, implying a market capitalisation of approximately A$7.5bn. The rerating has been driven by a combination of soaring tungsten prices, with the trailing twelve-month average APT price up 534% year-on-year to US$2,250 per MTU, and the transition of Sangdong from a construction project to an active mine, with first ore delivered to the run-of-mine pad in December 2025 and a formal commissioning ceremony held in March 2026.

Almonty’s most recent annual figures, for the year ended 31 December 2025, showed revenue of C$32.5m, up 13% on the prior year, while the company reported a net loss of C$161.9m. That loss was almost entirely a function of non-cash fair value revaluations of embedded derivatives and warrants, totalling C$126.7m, tied to the sharp rise in Almonty’s own share price rather than any deterioration in the underlying business. Cash on hand stood at C$268.4m at year end following two equity raises and a July 2025 Nasdaq listing, leaving the company well funded as Sangdong ramps toward commercial production.

IPD Group (ASX: IPG)

Imagine if you could buy an EV seller on the ASX? You can only imagine but perhaps buying a company selling electrical equipment making EVs possible is the next best thing and this is what IPD Group does. IPD (not to be confused with Impedimed which shares that ticket) listed on the ASX on 17 December 2021 at an IPO price of A$1.20 per share, raising A$40m.

IPD sells electrical infrastructure products under brands such as ABB, GE, Socomec, DEHN and Elsteel to switchboard manufacturers, electrical wholesalers, contractors, utilities and system integrators, alongside a services division offering installation, testing, calibration and maintenance work. Investors have increasingly framed IPD Group as a way to play the broader energy transition, given its exposure to electric vehicle charging infrastructure through its Addelec and Gemtek businesses, and, more recently, to data centre electrification demand.

IPD Group’s share price has risen from its A$1.20 IPO price to around A$5.70-5.86 by mid-2026, a gain of roughly 375-390%, making it one of the few 2021-vintage ASX floats to have delivered a sustained, uninterrupted increase in shareholder value rather than a single speculative spike. The underlying business has scaled alongside the share price: FY25 revenue reached A$354.7m, up 22.1% on the prior year, while net profit rose 17.1% to A$26.2m.

Growth has come from a mix of organic demand and disciplined acquisitions, most recently the A$45m purchase of Platinum Cables in December 2025, funded primarily through debt to limit shareholder dilution. IPD Group’s appeal, in our view, lies in its position as a “boring” but profitable distribution business sitting behind several structural growth themes at once: electrification, EV infrastructure and data centre build-out, without the binary regulatory risk that characterises some of the other names on this list.

Conclusion

While each company is in a different, space found a genuine and durable source of value creation after listing: a clear regulatory catalyst in the case of 4DMedical and EBR Systems, disciplined execution and market share capture in the case of Aussie Broadband and IPD Group, a well-timed acquisition in the case of DDB, and a combination of commodity tailwinds and project delivery in the case of Almonty Industries. So while most COVID-era ASX IPOs were duds, not all of them were!